Hello Cube-ists! To date, more than 200 volunteers have contributed their time, talents and ideas to The Life Cube Project. This is an amazing start as one of the objectives is to bring art and community together – and it appears we are succeeding. Thank you to each and everyone of you for taking part in the first urban installation. The Cube will open to the general public on February 21st. Please plan to stop by and fill out a wish stick with your wishes, hopes, dreams or aspirations. They will be celebrated and sent to the universe in a fiery ceremony on the evening of March 21st. Thank you for joining us from build to burn! Scott Cohen & The Life Cube Project Downtown Las Vegas Team #art #project #cube #LasVegas #lifecube #downtown #volunteers

I have been doing what is fun and intersting – testing of facebook create a badge thingy. this is Scott’s profile

I’m off to SF on Sunday for the GDC (Game Developer Conference). I will be meeting regard to 2 companies – Double Trump and VideoAdGames (Ad-DictionTV). It should be a very busy week.

OK  – so if I did not just go through the college thing, and know people with young kids struggling to get them into a good pre-school, this would be funny.   Fact is, it is sad that this type of situation exists.  If we can send people to the moon, as a society, we should be able to offer outstanding education and schools to everyone (from pre-school to college). Monday, February 12, 2007 Wall Street Journal: London Parents Scramble for Edge In Preschool Wars By CECILIE ROHWEDDER LONDON — To get her son into elementary school at age 4, Emma Pliner signed him up at birth. When she went into labor, she took the application forms with her to the hospital. "I filled in the forms with an epidural in my back," she says. Then, as Ms. Pliner delivered a healthy baby boy, a courier delivered the paperwork to several elementary schools. The early effort paid off: Little Charlie was accepted at several schools, including Wetherby, the school Prince William attended. London, like Manhattan, is one of the most extreme examples for preschool admissions mania. At nearly all private schools here, parents must apply as soon as children are born. Some schools grant spots on the basis of those applications. At others, applying at birth might merely win a chance for a child to interview and test for admission when he or she is ready for elementary school at four. Parents who don’t apply early or who move to London with a small child are often out of luck. Competition is increasingly intense here amid an influx of wealthy parents who work in banking, hedge funds and other financial businesses. Rich foreigners from Russia, India, the Mideast, and Hong Kong are drawn to London because it doesn’t tax income earned outside the United Kingdom. As more American banks add to their operations here, their families are adding to the throng. At Wetherby, the boys school near Hyde Park, head teacher Jenny Aviss advises women scheduling Caesarean sections to have them early in the month in order to secure one of five places that the school allots to newborns each month. "If you have the option, don’t wait until the 31st, have it on the first and call on the second," she says. At Wetherby’s sister school next door, the Pembridge Hall school for girls, headmistress Elizabeth Marsden says one parent called the school twice a day for six months. Another sent flowers every week. One woman refused to leave the building until her child was given a place. She had to be removed by the police. Ms. Marsden says none of these efforts helped secure a spot at the school, whose tuition is $22,820 a year. To get her daughter, Charlotte, into nearby Norland Place School, Annette Benigni submitted forms when Charlotte was 7 months old and started calling the school when Charlotte was 3 and on the waiting list. "I called the school like a madwoman," says Ms. Benigni. Charlotte was accepted. ‘Polite Harassment’  Norland Place bursar Ian Justham, who fields most of the calls from parents, says the school encourages "polite harassment." He tells families they may phone as often as they want, provided the calls are cordial, but he insists there is no connection between the number of phone calls and a child’s ranking on the admissions list.  "It’s mainly to give people reassurance," he says.  Parents Katy and Rob Forshaw sent Mr. Justham a vacation postcard from Australia. "Here is a piece of polite harassment from far away," it said. Their son, Cassius, was admitted from the waiting list just before school started last September.  A lot of British children aren’t in this rug-rat race. Children enter schools at age 5, when compulsory schooling starts. More than 90% of children in Britain attend schools that are run by the state and don’t charge tuition. Many London schools have required registration at a child’s birth since their founding in the 19th century. Most say that such a first-come, first-served system remains the fairest and most practical approach. More Pressure  At one popular private nursery, the Broadhurst School, mothers sign up even before their babies are born. Headmistress Deirdre Berkery recently got a call from a woman who was five weeks’ pregnant. "Every year, there seems to be more pressure for places," says Ms. Berkery, whose school is fully booked until January 2010. It has 500 names on the waiting list. Mother of two Natalie Richenberg registered both her daughters at Broadhurst when she learned she was pregnant. Lela Bristol, a lawyer currently at home with two children, was too late for Pembridge Hall because she called when her daughter, Xenia, was 3 months old. She also missed a place at a nearby school that selects students by lot. The Bristols are now planning to send Xenia to state school. "I was hit with anxiety because I was worried that I was ruining her future," Ms. Bristol says. "We’re taking a risk sending her to [state] school." Thomas’s London Day Schools, a group of four elementary schools and two nurseries, require parents to register their children soon after birth, and then test them at the age of 3 or 4. Children must write their names, do puzzles and draw pictures as part of assessments. Group principal Ben Thomas says the schools look for confidence, willingness to tackle new tasks and ability to grapple with new environments. Mr. Thomas discourages parents from tutoring their offspring for the assessments but acknowledges that some do anyway. Acceptance and rejection letters are mailed out in February. Last year, Clelia Vercueil, then 3, refused to cooperate with the assessment. Clelia, who speaks Italian as a second language, "simply said ‘no’ to everything," recalls her mother, Ilaria Vercueil. Clelia didn’t make the cut, but she was accepted at two of the other five schools her parents applied to.

Addicted to L-U-V By NORA EPHRON Published: May 13, 2007 ABOUT three years ago, I stumbled onto something called Scrabble Blitz. It was a four-minute version of Scrabble solitaire, on a Web site called Games.com, and I began playing it without a clue that within 24 hours — I am not exaggerating — it would fry my brain. I’m no stranger to this sort of thing: one summer when I was young, I became so addicted to croquet that I had a series of recurrent dreams in which I was whacking my mother’s head through a wicket. The same sort of thing happened with Scrabble Blitz, although my mother, who has been dead for many years, was left out of it. I began having Scrabble dreams in which people turned into letter tiles that danced madly about. I tuned out on conversations and instead thought about how many letters there were in the name of the person I wasn’t listening to. I fell asleep memorizing the two- and three-letter words that distinguish those of us who are hooked on Scrabble from those of you who aren’t. For instance, while you were not paying attention to Scrabble, the following have become words in the Scrabble dictionary: ka, qi and za. Don’t ask me what they mean, but my guess is that in the tradition of all such things, they are Indonesian coins. Luv is also a word, by the way, as is suq. Remember that ad — “This is your brain … This is your brain on drugs”? That was me. My brain turned to cheese. I could feel it happening. It was clear that I was becoming more and more scattered, more distracted, more unfocused; I was exhibiting all the symptoms of terminal attention deficit disorder; I was turning into a teenage boy. I instantly became an expert on how the Internet could alter your brain in a permanent way, especially if you were a teenage boy, and I offered my opinions on this subject at all sorts of places, where, as I recall, no one was particularly interested. The Scrabble Blitz site was full of other deranged Scrabble Blitzers, who dealt with their addiction by writing comments about it in the Web site’s chat room during the two-minute break between games, the two-minute break being a perfect time to log off and stop playing Scrabble Blitz for good but you didn’t because you were totally hooked and besides you were only going to play one more game, or maybe two. The comments consisted of things like: “I’m an addict, lol” and “I can’t stop playing this ha ha.” My contempt for these comments led me to think I was somehow different from the people who wrote them, but the truth is I wasn’t — I was exactly like them except for the lol’s and the ha ha’s, and even I have used an lol and a ha ha from time to time, though not in a chat room, and most of the time, I hope, ironically. (But to be perfectly honest, not every time.) The game of Scrabble Blitz eventually became too much for the Web site. Lag was a huge problem. From time to time, the Scrabble Blitz area would shut down for days, and when it returned, so did all the addicts, full of comments about how they had barely withstood life without the game. I began to get carpal tunnel syndrome from playing. I’m not kidding. I realized I was going to have to kick the habit. I thought about kicking the habit. I promised myself I would. After one more game. After one more day. After one more week. And then, one day, out of the blue, I was saved by what’s known in the insurance business as an act of God: Games.com shut down Scrabble Blitz. And that was that. It was gone. I went back to online Scrabble, a mild and soporific version of the game. I restricted myself to two games a day — no more. I wandered from one Scrabble Web site to another — there are several — and recently found my way to a place called Scrabulous.com. I’ve been playing there for just over 50 days — I know because I recently received a congratulatory e-mail message from “The Scrabulous Team” on the occasion of my 100th game. It crossed my mind when I got the message that even two games a day was too much. But it didn’t stop me from playing: my habit was under control. But the other week, I had a major setback. I went onto the Scrabulous site to play my customary two games, and to my amazement, right there on the entry page, was a chance to play Scrabble Blitz. Only it wasn’t called Scrabble Blitz. It was called Blitz Scrabble. It was back. It was working perfectly. And not only was it back, so were all the people I used to play with, all of them making their sad little jokes about being addicted to the game, followed by lol or ha ha and even an occasional :). I decided to play just one game, or maybe two. An hour later, I was still there. My heart was racing. My brain was once again turning to cheese. I was hooked. It’s now been several days — several days when I’ve either been playing Scrabble Blitz or thinking about playing Scrabble Blitz. Several days that ended with tiles dancing through my head as I fell asleep. Several days of turning into a teenage boy again. Last night I had dinner with my husband, and while he was talking about George Tenet, I was thinking about the letter X. I was thinking, hex, lex, rex, xi, xu, exude. My husband moved on to talk about Iraq, and I moved on to Q: qat, qaid, qua, quae. There’s only one solution: I have to stop. If I can’t do it by simple will-power, I may have to go to the Parental Controls page on my computer — I’m sure there is one — and put Scrabulous.com on the Don’t Go There list, or whatever it’s called. So goodbye. I’m going. I am definitely going. Any minute now.  But first, I’m going to play my last game of Scrabble Blitz. Nora Ephron, the author, most recently, of “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman,” is a contributing columnist for The Times.

By Craig Huber, Fox 5  Las Vegas LAS VEGAS (FOX5) – From the Life is Beautiful festival to First Friday, art is a big part of the rebirth of downtown Las Vegas.  A new piece of art is taking shape downtown, and the man behind it says it will make your dreams come true. Read more here  http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/24710708/ever-changing-downtown-las-vegas-a #art #downtownlasvegas #dtlv #lifecubeproject

Well written and worth considering.   I have passed on to the CEOs of the Board I serve on. I’ve been writing about boards of directors some lately – both changing my behavior as well as thinking out loud as I explore reinventing how boards work for the book “Startup Boards” that I’m working on with Mahendra Ramsinghani. All fit in the context of continuous communications as I believe three things about early stage companies and their boards. 1. Board members should be actively engaged with the company on a continuous / real time basis. 2. Existing board meeting dynamics are often an artifact of how they’ve been done for the past 30 years. 3. The way most board meetings are currently conducted is a waste of time for management, significantly inefficient, and generally ineffective. One of the very simple tactical things I’m shifting to is a totally different board rhythm. Historically, many of the companies I’m involved in have been on a board rhythm of meetings every four to six weeks. As they become more mature, these board meetings shift to quarterly, although many of them have mid-quarter update calls. The board meetings themselves are long affairs (even the monthly ones) – often lasting three or more hours. At some point I’ll dissect one of these board meetings and explain all the things that are artifacts of the past. These artifacts are a result of the communication methods that existed 30+ years ago that required paper and face to face meetings and resulted in very structured communications. But for now, I’ll give you three specific things to change. 1. Separate the monthly financials from the board meeting. Send out monthly financials (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow) with a written analysis of them. This written analysis should be done by the CEO (or president / COO), not the CFO, and should be in English, not accounting-ese. 2. Have quarterly board meetings. These should be in person meetings with no laptops, smartphones, or iPads in the room. Give the people pads of paper to write on if they don’t bring their own (I don’t carry paper). 100% attention for the meeting. Arrange the meeting so you can have a dinner the night before or after the meeting. The meeting shouldn’t last more than four hours but should be fully engaged. 3. Provide regular weekly CEO updates, to all board members. The best entrepreneurs I know communicate regularly with everyone in the company and have a structured update process of some sort. The best CEOs send out short but focused weekly updates to their boards. These are not “templated updates” – they don’t necessarily fill in a set of things that they update each week. Often they are just a “sit in front of the computer and send out an email update” type of update full of substance, whatever is on the CEO’s mind, and requests for help. My favorites have typos and look like a blog post of mine (e.g. it looks like someone just wrote it rather than struggled over it for hours to get it just right.) While my 2012 board meeting schedule is locked in, I plan to shift to quarterly meetings in 2013 for every board I’m on. I’m sure some of my co-investors will still want monthly meetings, but that’ll be up to the CEO to ultimately decide and I’ll commit to being in person for one a quarter, but fully engaged on a continuous basis (like I try to always be.) (Original posted by Brad Feld) #CEO #VCs #boardofdirectors #bradfeld #boardmeetings #companymeetings #investors #boardcommunications

This was my last wish that was deposited in to The Life Cube V1 at Burning Man 2011 #TheLifeCube #dimestore #redtiemedia #burningmanburningman #Burningman #redtie #artatburningman #skeeter #BM2012 #redtiemedia #redtie #247media #burningman2012 #lifecube #scottcohen #artatburningman #dimestoremedia #bm2011 #liveperson #burningman2011 #BurningMan

<a href=" Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, breaks down how the economy went from great to horrific in six simple steps. Let me know what you think. #economy #PresidentClinton #RobertReich #taxes #SecretaryofLabor

Over the years, I have proudly acknoledged that I was one of the first 100,000 Blackberry users. The fact is at Esther Dyson’s PC Forum in 1999 RIM provided Blackberry units to all conference attendees ore-populated with the name and contact info of everyone. It was a brilliant move that obtained early adopters to try the device. And it worked! Pre-Blackberry, our company had been using Motorola pagers. I think my page address was PAGESCOTT@Motorola.com. Over the years, new mobile devices have come and gone and come again, but I remained fierce in my loyalty. Many times I would reiterate “from my cold dead hands will you get me to give up my blackberry”. In another words “NEVER”. I could not care about the sexy iPhone or apps, or better browsing. I wanted dependable, reliable, and secure email. With the recent outage, I am finally looking at alternatives. I hate the idea of a touch screen keyboard — really really do not look forward to learning to type on something the in the past I could do in the dark. And I am not one to accept that all things must change, but it is time. Research In Motion (RIM), you fucked up. Bigtime. I could have accepted the inferior product on so many fronts, but the recent failure and lack of dependability make it stupid for me not to look at alternatives. First Eastman Kodak and now RIM. Change and bankruptcy is in your future. You may be hoping for a last minute white knight to buy your company, but I doubt that anyone will step up. My only decision going forward is when and whether I chose an Apple iPHONE or Google Android. Thanks for all those years of service, and I’m sure your replacement will cause me heartache too, but you guys blew it. Big time. Go crawl in a hole and make your excuses. You had it, you lost it. Sad day. #mobiledevice #mobilephone #blackberry #google #ResearchInMotion #Apple #RIM #iPHONE #Android #smartphone

You know those things were you have to  type in the letters to register for a site.  It is a requirement to prevent automated registrations.  Well, this weekend I came across one that simply asked 2 + 3 = blank.  I loved it.  Did not have to try and figure out was the an I or and L, or was that an E or and A.  Duh!  Congrats on whoever launched that tech wizardry.